CHAMORRO CASUALTIES BEYOND GUAM

MEMORIAL TO CHAMORRO WAR CASUALTIES
OUTSIDE OF GUAM

Skinner Plaza, Hagatña

Not all the Guam Chamorros who died in World War II died on Guam. 

Growing up on Guam in the 1960s and 70s, all we heard about were the Chamorros who died during the war right here on island. No one talked about Chamorros who died during the war outside of Guam.

So imagine my surprise years later in the 1980s when I visited the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and saw Chamorro names on the wall listing the victims who died in that Japanese attack. Unmistakable Chamorro names like Mafnas and Fegurgur! Why hadn't I heard about them before? It turns out there were  TWELVE Chamorro men who died at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Guam. These, then, were the first Chamorro casualties of World War II.

PEARL HARBOR HAWAII

December 7, 1941

On the USS Arizona the following died :

AGUON, Gregorio 
FEGURGUR, Nicolas 
MAFNAS, Francisco Reyes 
MENO, Vicente Gogue 
QUINATA, Jose Sanchez 
RIVERA, Francisco Unpingco 

On the USS Nevada :

MAFNAS, Andres Fránquez 

On the USS Oklahoma :

FARFÁN, Ignacio Camacho
GARCÍA, Jesús Francisco

On the USS West Virginia :

FLORES, José San Nicolás 
MATA, Jesús Manalisay
MENDIOLA, Enrique Castro 

A CHAMORRO NAME AT PEARL HARBOR

Gregorio SN Aguon, US Navy

WAKE ISLAND

December 8-23, 1941

Even lesser known were the TEN Chamorros killed when the Japanese attacked Wake Island. Wake is on our side of the International Dateline, so that attack began on December 8, 1941, the same day as Guam.

The Wake attack began at 12 noon Wake time, when it was 10AM Guam time. Guam's attack was already in progress for an hour and a half by the time the Japanese struck Wake, so Guam's Chamorro casualties come in second, after Pearl Harbor, followed by Wake, on the first day of the war. Teddy Cruz and Larry Pangelinan, civilian employees at the Pan American Hotel in Sumay, were killed in the Sumay bombing that morning.

Forty-five Chamorro men were working on Wake when the Japanese attacked on December 8.  It took a while, but the Japanese finally occupied Wake on December 23.  Chamorros were among the casualties there, too.  

An eye witness of the Japanese attack on the first day says that some of the Chamorro hotel employees were so shocked by the attack that they just stood there looking at the shooting Japanese planes. Others yelled at them to take cover, but at least several Chamorros were killed when Japanese bombs exploded, and other Chamorro workers were injured. An American construction worker who was supposed to escape Wake on the one and only Pan Am Clipper leaving the island right after the Japanese attack missed his flight because he voluntarily helped transport some of the injured Chamorros to get medical help.

One Pan Am Clipper could not evacuate the military and civilian population on Wake on December 8, which numbered over a thousand people. So they all waited for the next round of Japanese attacks, which came, and lasted till December 23 when the Japanese finally succeeded in landing troops on Wake and took it over from the Americans.

Ten Chamorros on Wake died in that time period. According to a survivor, Francisco Chaco Carbullido, the ten Chamorros died within the first two days of the Japanese attacks, meaning December 8 and 9.

The Wake casualties were :

BLANCO, Francisco M

BLAS, José R

CABRERA, Juan M

FLORES, James William

GUERRERO, Felipe C

MAFNAS, José S

MANALISAY, Francisco T

MANIBUSAN, Vicente C

QUAN, Gregorio C

SABLAN, Silvestre C

After the Japanese were in control of Wake, it was only a matter of a few weeks when the Japanese shipped almost all the Wake prisoners to China and Japan, leaving behind a work crew of 98 men whom the Japanese massacred in 1943. The 35 surviving Chamorro workers on Wake were all sent to POW camps in China and Japan.

Two of them died while in prison in the Shanghai (China) POW camp under the Japanese :

CAMACHO, Jesús P died on August 20, 1942 from cancer of the tongue. It seems he was cremated there.

TAIJERON, Gerónimo S died on September 19, 1944 as a result of liver cancer. He was buried in Shanghai.

The Chamorro men on Wake in 1941 were civilians, employees of Pan American Airways. But in 1988 the US Congress gave these men veteran status, with accompanying benefits.

mvguam.com

Francisco Chaco Carbullido

Chamorro Survivor of the Battle of Wake Island and POW camps in China and Japan

PHILIPPINES

1941-1945

* Some sources, such as the War in the Pacific website, mention a Filomeno Santos as being a Guam casualty at Pearl Harbor. No citation is given. The Guam censuses for 1920, 1930 and 1940 do not have a Filomeno Santos, and other records state that a Filomeno Santos who was in the Navy and who died in Pearl Harbor was from the Philippines and enlisted in California (where his wife resided as well). Perhaps the confusion comes from the possibility that Filomeno re-enlisted on Guam while he was on duty there before World War II.